News

Police and Crime Commissioner elections are taking place across England and Wales (apart from London) in November. These new elected positions are designed to enable us to have more influence in how our local areas look and feel - from CCTV, street lighting and graffiti to tackling gangs and drug-dealing. This is your chance to have your say and Samantha Mills, Head of Campaigns at the Electoral Commission writes for OBV about the making sure that your vote counts.

For some people, the mere mention of politics, sets of a chorus of “blah, blah, blah” in their head. Not so, for 21 year old Business and Sociology student Shevane Poyser from Aston University. Poyser is the President of the Empowerment Society at the university and writes exclusively for Operation Black Vote about the aims of the society and why he believes activism is important and necessary.

In February 2013, Cyprus will take part in its Presidential elections. Although a few months away, the elections have gained global attention this week because of comments by Archbishop Chrysostomos II of Cyprus.

At this time of severe austerity measures, immigration, foreign aid and refugees are just some of the issues which become easy targets in a populist backlash. OBV spoke exclusively to Pam Inder, Chair of Leicester City of Sanctuary, a national charity which helps people seeking sanctuary in the UK to explore the so-called ‘refugee problem’.

Sol B River had an exclusive interview with the American Civil Rights activist, James Meredith, which was aired last night  on BBC 2's Newsnight. The interview covered a range of themes that resonate profoundly with both its participants as well as the BME community at large. In an age of significant racial discrimination, James Howard Meredith went on to become a key player in the African-American Civil Rights Movement that dominated the early 1960s.

Leicester City Liberal Democrats have received the prestigious Dadabhai Naoroji Award at the National Party Conference in Brighton last week. It is the first time the award has been presented in commemoration of Naoroji’s historic achievements of which there were many.

Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna MP has written to Business Secretary Vince Cable MP to urge him to rethink measures in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill that will weaken the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Umunna believes that the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill which is due to return to the House of Commons for its third reading this month, contains measures relating to the Equality and Human Rights Commission which Cable referred to as “legislative tidying-up” at Second Reading.

Following on from OBV’s reporting earlier this week that a leading BME campaigning group slammed the Metropolitan Police’s Commission on Policing and Mental Health as nothing more than a ‘cosmetic exercise’, OBV attended the Police and Crime Committee, which convened at City Hall yesterday morning.

The FA has found Chelsea captain John Terry guilty of racially abusing QPR player Anton Ferdinand. Terry has never denied he said the words, ‘You f…Black c…t, but has consistently argued it was always in the context of a question, ‘are you saying I called you a f…black c...t? ‘

Protests have rocked the Muslim world over the past week, sparked by a tawdry amateur film produced in the US widely seen as a gratuitous attack on Islam.

Throughout the Middle East the ongoing reality of US interference and bloodshed makes any insult to the Islamic tradition especially provocative. But even in Britain Muslims have cause to feel they are seen as "fair game" by an unscrupulous media.

The Leveson Inquiry is entering its concluding phase and the subject of press racism has been ignored.